Gospel Centered Life translation project

The longer we do this job, the more we realize how crucial it is that the Gospel, specifically the Cross of Christ, be the center-point in all we do and the single motivating force behind all of it.

Our team here in Voronezh met a couple weeks ago, over 20 of us, to begin wrapping our hearts around the upcoming launch into our seventh year of ministry together. As we focused together on what it is that motivates us to do this work, we decided that the first step in launching this new year of ministry, would be to refocus ourselves as a team on the Cross, and see what flows out from there as we as a community serve the needs of the kids God brings our way.

But, what material is available for such focus? Especially Russian-language material?

Well, last year our son Ben discovered a short Bible study curriculum entitled, Gospel Centered Life, publish on-line by World Harvest Mission, which he had used effectively with his youth ministry team in Texas. I bought a copy of it for myself and began the study on my own, and since then Ann and I have both gone through the study more than once. We became convinced that it was just the tool to use for disciple-making here, both with our team, and our guys at Hope House. So, we set out to get it translated into Russian.

World Harvest Mission, the original publishers of the materials in English, have granted us the rights to translate and use the materials in Russian. Praise God for the language gifts of our friend Larisa. After showing her the study, she got excited and got on board, and we now have a complete working copy (first draft) Russian Student Guide for the study.

Please pray with us as we implement and facilitate this study with our team over the coming weeks. We feel like it is so key right now to get our entire team, not only focused and Gospel-centered, but that their service be Gospel motivated. In view of the current financial cloud over this ministry we’ve discussed elsewhere on this site, it gives us hope, in case our days here are numbered, to believe that with a Gospel-centered, Gospel-motivated team, God’s work here would not miss a step in the event of our absence.